Blue Room Hosting launches Linux KVM virtual private servers

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Posted by blueroomhosting, 07-17-2008, 05:48 PM
Blue Room Hosting are very pleased to announce the launch of our Linux KVM services.

For a while now there have been two main contenders for open source virtualization. OpenVZ provides paravirtualization for excellent performance, while Xen is a full hypervisor for improved resource isolation.

KVM (which stands for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a newcomer set to cause a stir. Like Xen it is a full hypervisor, but instead of creating a heavily modified kernel, the KVM project uses a much leaner approach. With just a couple of modules, KVM turns a normal Linux installation into a primary domain. Each guest is run as a single process, which can be scheduled and controlled using the tried and trusted Linux mechanisms.

The important difference is that KVM is a much smaller project, taking full advantage of the Linux kernel rather than trying to reimplement everything from scratch. This has led to two key benefits. Firstly the small, modular code has become the first virtualization solution to be incorporated into the mainline kernel, which is a testament to its stability and quality. Secondly, the KVM team have been able to focus on virtualization alone, so while KVM and Xen could have identical performance, KVM is often ahead.

KVM is now being pushed by major Linux vendors as the virtualization technology of choice. Ubuntu now comes with KVM by default, and there is also a special version for running optimally as a KVM guest. RedHat have also announced that they are dropping Xen in favour of KVM.

With improved hardware support in recent Intel, and especially AMD CPUs the performance gap between full virtualization and paravirtualization is rapidly diminishing. With the added advantage of supporting a number of unmodified guest operating systems, it is easy to see why full virtualization is considered the future of server consolidation.

For further information, please see our Linux KVM Plans.